9 Jul 2012

I got a little bit behind with posting pictures of my Tour De Fleece progress. I finished spinning the singles for the Babydoll Southdown and I am now half way through the singles for the Dorset Corriedale X.

Babydoll Southdown Singles

Dorset Corriedale X Singles

On the carding front, all the turquoise Jacob is done! I have now started on the magenta Jacob. This time I am trying to make fluffy rolags and see how differently they spin to the punis I prepared from the other fibers.

The spindle is now empty again as I am half way through spinning the Babydoll-Southdown and I want to make a 2-ply yarn. I also realized that I might be nearly half way through carding the torquoise Jacob too. Which is about on target as each are 1/3rd of my target, so being 1/6th of the way through by the end of today would mean I might even get everything done!

My spinning of the Babydoll had definitely improved; either that or the rolags lower in the bag were better prepared. Babydoll is different to any other fiber I have spun before and I am excited to see what the final yarn will look like.

24 Jun 2012

When the Tour de France starts next Saturday, spinners from around the world will be cheering on the cyclists by getting out their spindles and wheels. These spinners challenge themselves to be better spinners by creating extra special, to them, yarn. This is called the Tour de Fleece and is on Ravelry. I will be one of the Tour De Fleece spinners and have set myself several goals as I am a member of several teams.

As a member of Team Suck Less I am going to suck less at hand-carding and get Marta Jacob’s fleece carded up as much as possible. This has been hanging over me since last year’s TDF! Team Suck Less is sponsored by Friend’s of Abby’s Yarns, an awesome group of very supportive Ravelry members.

As a member of Team Black & Beyond with Fleece Fiber Source Book, I have a fiber sampler challenge. For this I will spin some new to me fibers. In particular, fibers I purchased last month at All About Ewe: Babydoll, Romney, and Dorset-Corriedale X. If that isn’t enough I have some llama, yak and alpaca to try.

I am also a member of the Peloton, with walking with my spindle while spinning as my challenge. I especially want to spin on my Jenkins Kuchulu Turkish Spindle which I purchased earlier this year. Look isn’t the Kuchulu sweet:

As part of my training, I carded the fibers for my fiber sampler challenge and got my arms all good and ready for carding Marta Jacob. Here are my puni-rolags, which I made after carding by rolling over a spindle shaft. Here are the three fibers:

L-R Babydoll, Dorset-Corriedale X, Romney

I also cheated a little bit. I have got into hand carding so much that I didn’t want to stop. So I started on Marta’s fleece mentioned above. I have quite a lot of her fleece to card and I do want to get it done this year, so I carded the light gray fiber and started on the mid grays. I did all the darker colors last year.